Book One – Chapter 17

“The wild is in you,” the shaman said. “You are of the old breed. You walk the edge between beast and kin. You hunger for purpose.”

Yu wiped frost from his face, using the motion to subtly rub at his earholes. It did not help sort our the mess of voices reaching him, voices now doubling, chasing each other, repeating the same thing. Everything the shaman said of the krynn echoed in her body. And as Yu could not stop listening, the boundary between speakers and subjects blurred until he realised that the shaman’s body echoed her voice not just to underline them, but because her words did not describe the beastkin alone. No, they were a mirror revelation about her own existence. Her voice and body said the same. Still, one spoke about the traveller, and the other about itself.

The krynn’s tail flicked again. “Is that the judgment?”

“It is truth,” the shaman replied. Her head turned toward the borman. “His rage is stone. Heavy. Settled. It waits. Yours is fire in wind. Untethered. Flaming. Flickering. Fleeting.”

The krynn’s ears pressed back.

“Your loyalty is your own,” the shaman went on. “You do not give it freely. Nor should you. But it must be given where it is due, otherwise you invite something else in its place. Not choice. Instinct.” She leaned forward, not much, but with something unsettling in the way her neck lengthened. Like she had too many joints. “Yes, you are a slave to your hunger.”

The krynn bared his teeth. “If you can see hunger in me, what have you swallowed to speak so calmly of it?”

The shaman paused. The blades around her shoulders rustled.

Defiance shaped the krynn’s features, but the sound that followed was not yet a growl. It was quieter. Lower. A shape closer to assent. “May I enter?” he pressed.

Slowly, the shaman leaned in. Her upper body lowered towards the krynn. Her head, neck and shoulders bent down right above him, so close that her hidden maw could bite off his face. Then she spoke again, but not in Teh. She spoke in a language no one but a beast like the krynn should recognise. No one but Yu, who did not even notice the change.